Undercover Hats

Jun Takahashi’s Undercover stands as shorthand for Japanese cool, channeling restless urban energy and dramatic high-concept elegance into an inimitable auteur vision, one that fascinates through apparent contradictions. Takahashi founded his long-lauded label in 1993 on the way to graduating from Tokyo's Bunka Academy of Fashion, breaking the unwritten “apprenticeship first” rule for young Japanese designers. Such irreverence and restless energy carried his early punk-inflected work, which benefited from the mentorship of Comme des Garçons icon Rei Kawakubo. A quarter-century later Takashi’s contemporary design world remains defined by wit and rebellion, offering women unexpected unions of materials, colors, and cuts. Under his philosophically-inclined direction, seemingly disparate tops, trousers, jackets, and sneakers are convincingly united by a womenswear ethos rooted in deconstructive tailoring, intriguing material detailing and unexpected contrasts. Viewed at a distance, one finds Undercover has constructed a logical yet surrealist design universe all its own, one which Takahashi presides over and continues to expand one collection at a time.